Elephants are for me a profound symbol on the spiritual as well as on the physical level. I am not alone. People have revered and feared elephants for thousands of years. Myths and legends abound, from Africa to the far east. Their images have been painted in caves and inside Egyptian tombs. They, themselves, are lavishly painted and decorated in the east on holy days. Ganesh the most beloved Indian god is shown in the form of an elephant.

So much is still being discovered about them and their behaviour. Their ‘human’ behavioural traits are well documented. It is only within the last decade that it was discovered that they communicated over large distances with each other using ultrasound. It has also been recently discovered that they are very sensitive to vibrations underfoot. They can ‘feel’ a stampeding herd kilometres away.

I lived for some years in Etosha National Park in Namibia in the late 70’s and early 80’s where the elephants were still able to be migratory and had never been culled. There were breeding herds – normally the most elusive and skittish of elephants – who were totally unafraid of humans. I have sat in a car closely surrounded by a large herd, with the adult females towering over me, while a few of them put their trunks out and gently touched and sniffed the car before unhurriedly turning away and ghost-melting into the thick mopane. Unforgettable, heart-stopping moments.

I am passionate and perhaps a little unbalanced about elephants. I believe that most people can only aspire to the ‘human’ qualities that elephants exhibit. The loss of hundreds of thousands of elephants to wholesale poaching, culling and habitat shrinkage due to human demand over the last 100 years is a terrible tragedy happening in front of our eyes. Their disappearance, like the canary used in coal mines to warn of poisonous gas, is a highly visible symptom that the planet is losing its wild, mysterious people, places and animals to exploitation.

I can go on forever but will end with a couple of quotes :

‘The beast that passeth all others in wit and mind … and by its intelligence, it makes as near an approach to man as matter can approach spirit’ Aristotle

‘For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing that befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all is vanity’ Ecclesiastes 3:19